This board is a composition workshop, like a writers' workshop: post your work with questions about style or vocabulary, comment on other people's work, post composition challenges on some topic or form, or just dazzle us with your inventive use of galliambics.

I have been busy of late and unable to comment on some others' recent translations, for which I apologize. Nevertheless, here is a recent effort of my own, rendered with the help of Gepp's hints (exercise XXVIII) in Progressive Exercises in Latin Elegiac Verse.

Woah. Proto-goth-kid-poetry. Someone get her some Siouxsie and the Banshees!

What on earth does she mean with the last line? My Latin is not so good I can figure out your interpretation.

And the last buds cease blowing.

I have never seen â€”Â or heard â€” any blowing buds in my garden. If she means buds being blown upon, what then does she mean by saying they cease? They die? I can maybe manage a nice dÃºnad if that's what she means.

annis wrote:What on earth does she mean with the last line? My Latin is not so good I can figure out your interpretation.

And the last buds cease blowing.

I have never seen â€” or heard â€” any blowing buds in my garden. If she means buds being blown upon, what then does she mean by saying they cease? They die? I can maybe manage a nice dÃºnad if that's what she means.

I find this usage of "blow" rather curious as well. I interpreted it basically as you did though: the buds cease blowing about (= being blowed upon) because they are dead. My translation was elicited by Gepp's suggestion: "And the last bud grieves, having lost its bloom."

Many of the examples that come to mind, however, seem tinged with the magical. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, for example, sometimes the transformed seem to retain elements of human emotion, but these are clearly special cases.

So I guess I just don't know. Perhaps someone better informed than I will come along and enlighten us?

You have to understand - Vergil's corpus is huge. There will be some good and some bad. But I think that goes with any poet, ancient or modern. I've never encountered any corpus that was 100% thoroughly excellent, but isn't that what makes us human?

Didymus wrote:annis, are you faced with the unfortunate task of versifying a list? Perhaps you shall soon favor us with some elegantly-wrought Greek?

Much of the first stanza of the Rosetti poem is a list. It has been difficult to Greek.

I'm hoping to have a translation wrought in a few days, though I'm not sure how elegant it will be.

In my search for some metrical help, though, I have learned that Homer never uses the word rose, á¿¥ÏŒÎ´Î¿Î½, nor does Hesiod, nor the Homeric Hymns excepting one example in h. Dem. There are compounds and derivatives, but never the rose itself.

Didymus wrote:annis, are you faced with the unfortunate task of versifying a list? Perhaps you shall soon favor us with some elegantly-wrought Greek?

Much of the first stanza of the Rosetti poem is a list. It has been difficult to Greek.

I'm hoping to have a translation wrought in a few days, though I'm not sure how elegant it will be.

Ah, I understand now. Outstanding!

So then to Chris: I'm not sure I understood your post either. I am indeed aware of the size of the Vergilian corpus (after all, I've read it), and I shall certainly grant that even Vergil nods. But ... I was not trying to evaluate the poetic merit of the passage I quoted; I was just mentioning that the pathetic fallacy can be found in Augustan poets. I make no claim on whether it is good or bad poetry. Or perhaps I have simply misunderstood?

Well done! I especially enjoyed your first four lines. Since I am at work and LSJ-less (and unable to type Greek), I must ask about the quantity of upsilon in hudata (line 3): is it long in epic? I thought I had learned it as short, but perhaps I misremember.

As to Hermann's bridge, my version violates it too (line 1, unless et is treated as a proclitic for purposes of the metrical law -- I'm not familiar enough with Hermann's bridge to know). I read that Augustan poets paid it little heed, so I decided that I could afford the same license. If I think of an emendation to your line I'll post it.

It certainly does warm my heart to see a fellow verse enthusiast at work.

The verb 'blow' was a synonym for 'bloom, blossom' in former times (Middle English: blowen, to bloom, from Old English blowan). Shakespeare used it for instance:

I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania some time of the night,
Lullâ€™d in these flowers with dances and delight
"A Midsummer-Nightâ€™s Dream" (2.1.260-5)

(Excuse list, Annis.)

Fitzgerald loved it:

IrÃ¡m indeed is gone with all its Rose,
And JamshÃ½d's Sev'n-ring'd Cup where no one knows;
But still the Vine her ancient Ruby yields,
And still a Garden by the Water blows.
..........
I sometimes think that never blows so red
The Rose as where some buried CÃ¦sar bled;
That every Hyacinth the Garden wears
Dropt in its Lap from some once lovely Head.
..........
While the Rose blows along the River Brink,
With old KhayyÃ¡m the Ruby Vintage drink:
And when the Angel with his darker Draught
Draws up to Thee--take that, and do not shrink.

full-blownadj.
1. Having blossomed or opened completely: full-blown roses.
2. Fully developed or matured.
3. Having or displaying all the characteristics necessary for completeness: a full-blown financial crisis.